Diana Hayes was born in Toronto and has lived on the east and west coasts of Canada. She has seven published books, including Sapphire and the Hollow Bone (Ekstasis Editions 2023), Gold in the Shadow(Rainbow Publishers 2021), and Labyrinth of Green by (Plumleaf Press 2019). Deeper Into the Forest, a spoken word/music CD, was produced at Allowed Sound Studio in 2020 with musician/sound engineer, Andy Meyers. She launched Raven Chapbooks, an indie publisher for small edition poetry chapbooks in 2019 and worked as the program coordinator for the Theatre Alive literary readings on Salt Spring for over two decades. She has lived on Salt Spring Island—the traditional and unceded territory of the Hul’q’umi’num’ and SENĆOŦEN speaking peoples—since 1981.
You can read Winter Solstice at Barrow—Utqiaġvik in the January 2025 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
My poem “Winter Solstice at Barrow—Utqiaġvik” is part of a longer chapbook length sequence titled Hawking the Surf. I often work in poetic series (narrative and imagistic) and in this case the series surfaced from early journals that I kept while I was a student at University of Victoria, way back in the mid-seventies. The journal entries were accompanied by a correspondence that I kept with my mentor. I weave in and out of Pacific Northwest (Cascadia) and far north landscapes, including Alaska. Each title includes geographic coordinates for the poem’s setting. In this poem, I touch on themes of isolation, instinct, and adaptation during the coldest and darkest period in the far north and the imagery parallels the speaker’s experience with relational isolation and loss. Barrow’s name officially changed in 2016 to the indigenous name Utqiaġvik. The location has been home to the Iñupiat, an indigenous Inuit ethnic group for more than 1,500 years. The name Utqiaġvik refers to a place for gathering wild roots. The town is 330 miles north of the Arctic Circle and experiences the ‘polar nights’ (when the sun remains below the horizon) for sixty-four days. The Snowy Owl has been seen as far north at 82o mid-winter and appears in my poem as a symbol of resilience and adaption.
How do you revise your work?
Once I have a rough draft, which often grows from notes and journal entries, I begin a kind of layering process where I assemble words, phrases, lines, and then stanzas until the poem takes on a working shape/form. At this point I move from handwritten form to a typed version. I read each draft aloud and can hear whether words are in their best place or need to be adjusted or replaced. Often whole lines or even stanzas must be deleted. I tend to pare down the original draft and this is where the process of sculping the poem begins. I put it away and return to it often until I am certain it is finished. Having said that, I find old poems surface again and after much rewriting, they might become part of a current sequence. This was the case with two or three poems in Hawking the Surf. On rare occasions, I might write a poem from start to finish that requires very little editing, almost as if it has been given to me.
How do you know when a poem is finished? Is a poem ever finished?
The question about revising work parallels the question about whether a poem is ever finished. I get to the place where I feel any further editing might cause the poem to regress or lose it’s essence. Excessive revisions can take away from the original poem. I usually know when it has reached completion based on sound and rhythm when I read it aloud.
What are you working on now?
Along with my work-in-progress, Hawking the Surf, I am also writing individual poems that arise outside of a specific sequence or theme. Recently I wrote a long line narrative poem about an experience on California’s Mendocino coast dating back several years. The poem was sparked by a workshop I attended at the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Festival which was led by poet Cynthia Sharp. I also find myself writing elegiac poetry and recently wrote a glossa in honour of a poet I deeply admire. I recently returned to my early draft and notes for a novella which is based on family history and takes place in Co. Cork, Ireland. I have written short fiction but have note ventured into the novella genre before.
How or where or with what does a poem begin?
There are various ways I begin. Often, I hear the sounds of words and the music of language before I’m clear about where the poem is going. Poems incubate in my journal. Even short lines and the beginnings of longer poems can be found in older notebooks. I am always inspired by nature, both its dark underbelly and its light-giving forces. I also draw from visual art and have written poems as a response to paintings and photographs. My book Language of Light (Plumleaf Press) combines my poetry with my photographic images. Sometimes my work arises from dream imagery or surfaces from a long-forgotten memory.
How do you make space for poetry in your daily routine?
Having a dedicated writing space for poetry is important. It can be just a corner of a room with a comfortable chair and desk, or a separate room from the living space which is ideal. A few years ago, my husband built a studio space—we call it the poetry pod. It is a small 9’x12’ cabin, not far from the house, overlooking the forest and marshlands. Having this separate space provides a kind of time capsule and sanctuary for complete immersion. I am a night hawk and often my best writing happens in the late hours. After the studio was built, I wrote a long sequence of ekphrastic ghazals in honour of the poet and artist, Phyllis Webb. I would go down to the studio in the evening and would not emerge until I had finished a poem. This went on for twenty-two nights and it was often dawn before I returned to the house. The project required that kind of intensity. The poems took me to places around the world, truly like a time-capsule. I also make space for poetry by reading poetry books each evening before sleep.
Do you belong to a writer’s group? If not, where do you find poetry community and feedback?
I have been part of a writer’s group here on Salt Spring Island for well over twenty years. Some of the original members are still part of the group. We are now a circle of eight, but this has varied over the years. We keep it small so that we have adequate time to spend on each piece. We meet once a month to workshop our poems which can be a valuable step towards finishing a piece. We bring rough drafts or nearly finished poems and they always benefit from skilled feedback. I am grateful to have this group.
How did you begin writing poetry? Was there a specific inspiration or reason?
I was introduced to the world of poetry as a child, growing up with an extended family that included my maternal grandparents. My grandmother recited poetry often and trained my ear to the rhythms, the mysteries, and what I later called the language of the soul. Poetry became nourishment in my survival kit during adolescence when I first began to write. I would skip classes to sit in the library’s poetry stacks, lost for the afternoon in the writings of poets like Sylvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg. Poems became prayers and translations for adolescent melancholy and angst. In these early years, I was knitting stanzas into tiny home-made notebooks, writing as fast as I could. I believe poems can also arise from ancient or cellular memory. While I was researching family history and ancestors, I found that faraway landscapes, unfamiliar dialects and narratives began to find their way into my poems.